Just Smile
by Pallidus Mors
Summary: Life at number 4 Privet Drive was never exactly happy. A glimpse into Petunia's twisted head as she goes about her (mostly) pre- Harry life.


Title: Just Smile   
Author: Pallidus Mors  
Pairing(s): Only cannon ones (James/Lily, Vernon/Petunia)   
Warning: A bit of angst, a bit of violence, Petunia's POV, het   
Disclaimer: I don't own it, J.K. Rowling does.   
  
  
The baby is crying, my baby. The horrid thing that grew inside me for nine months, making me sick and fat, turning my legs purple and my face puffy. It's monstrous you know, and I can't help but hate it. Vernon's baby, his son, the one he always wanted, with dishwater eyes and fat fists. I'm not going to let that thing latch onto me, suck out my breast milk and cling, hot and mewling and red, to my shirt front. Is it wrong to hate something you created; a life that sat inside you, feeding off of you like a parasite? I know I should love it, that red, slimy creature they pulled from me, but I can't bring myself to look at it in the glass incubator looking like a side of beef in a hospital bracelet.   
  
When he was born I refused the drugs, I wanted to feel the pain of him being torn from my womb so that it would seem real and not like some sparkly dream. Did you know your body tricks you after you give birth? It makes you forget about the pain, and the screaming and the acrid odor of your own blood on the pristine sheets so you'll want to go out and have lots more babies. Your body wants you to keep on popping the horrid little things out at top speed, populating the world with fat, blonde children.   
  
I hate myself for producing such a thing, what kind of mother am I, hating her baby just because it's ugly? I can fell the drugs now; I stopped rejecting them after they put him on my stomach and the great putrid thing wailed and wailed in my arms until its little voice was thin and its seeking mouth looked like a fish, round and sucking on air because I wouldn't guide it to the fount of my mammary. So now the painkillers are sliding into my blood through the IV in my hand and I can feel the icy drugs as they drip into my veins. It hurts at first, a strange pricking along my arm and then I numb so I can't tell its there anymore. Poor baby, I really do hate it. I'm repulsed by my own dislike, shouldn't that maternal instinct be kicking in right about now?   
  
It hasn't gotten better. The rain keeps falling outside my window onto the hospital grounds, and we're supposed to leave today, me and my brutish husband and my monstrous baby. It's been formula fed since the day it arrived, a bloody lump of clammy flesh with a few wisps of blonde hair stuck to its huge scalp. Getting bigger by the day, chubbier, those round little fists getting fatter. Vernons taken with it, keeps making those stupid cooing sounds when the thing cries, not helping of course, he just waits for the nurse to come and tend the child while I pretend to be asleep.   
  
I wonder why I did it, why I married him and decided to have his ugly children. Not that it matters I suppose, I did and now I'm stuck in a sterile house in a respectable neighborhood, a perfect, packaged wife. No wonder I fell plastic, like some hideous defunct Barbie doll living in her pink house with her matching accessories. He's talking again, purple fish lips forming words I can't decipher, those beady eyes searching my own. I don't want him here, I feel fat and irrational, and Vernon is just sitting in the orange hospital chair with the baby swathed in blue blankets squirming in his arms. Why won't he go away?   
  
"Petunia, we have to leave. Do you want me to wheel you to the car?"   
  
He looks angry but he's containing it well. His veins are bulging, the carotid looks as if its about to burst. Maybe it's about to split, spurting blood across the clean white room and onto the windowsill. I can't help but giggle at the image.   
  
"I can walk."  
  
He nods then, scooping up the child in its blue footed pajamas and the blue blanket with cartoon characters emblazoned on the front.   
  
"Let's go."   
  
We walk along the clean white hallways, Vernon in front of me with the baby as I struggle to put one foot in front of the other. I've gained a sort of cynical apathy; I don't care about this, about the vague sort of pain I'm still feeling, and the fact that I'm still fat and wretchedly ugly. All I care about is the fact that the backs of my heels are making nice clicking sounds on the tiled floor of the hallways. I walk along going clack with each ginger step.   
  
Clack. Clack. Clack.   
  
"I suppose Dudders will be needing some formula, I've asked your friend, what's her name? You know, the one with the lisp."   
  
"Yvonne?"   
  
I've always hated Yvonne, she's got a fat bottom and always wears white capri pants and sandals with two-inch heels in the summer. Those heels make her waddle so her butt swings from side to side, its quite amusing really. All last summer I sat, thinking about my beautiful baby boy, who would have hair like Vernons and eyes like Lily's while Yvonne waddled about the garden and gave me lemonade with too much sugar.   
  
"Yes, her. I've asked Yvonne to buy some for him, the boy has a lot of growing to do."   
Clack. Clack. Clack.   
  
"Anyway, I've got work on Tuesday, will you be able to manage by then?"   
  
Clack.   
  
"I'm fine."   
  
Clack.   
  
"All right then."   
  
Clack. Clack. Clack.  
  
The nurse at the front desk gives me a toothy grin as we leave; she's in bad need of a bridge. I wonder why she's smiling like that, I feel as if I'm going to the gallows.   
  
"Here's the car."  
  
I want to smack Vernon, I can see the car very well, it's not as if I'm blind. All I did was have his fucking baby, something anybody can do. I mean it's not as if you need any talent to have children, why is he coddling me?   
  
"So I see."   
  
He opens the door for me, how chivalrous of him.   
  
"Thank you."   
  
I watch him strap the baby into his car seat through the mirror on the visor, noting that the backseat is looking tatty and we're probably going to have a by car by the fall. Vernon loves cars, red ones especially. Maybe someday he'll go crashing into a guardrail on his way home from work, his shiny new red car going up in flames, his body burning to ash on the plush leather interior. A flaming wreck on A24, the corpse so mangled they have to use dental records to identify it.   
  
We drive in silence except for the few times it whines in the back, that round head bumping against the plush restraints of the car seat. There goes the city behind us, great and gray, all the towers sticking up into the pewter clouds. And ahead lie the rows and rows of neat houses on their small square garden plots. They look so dull, so repetitive in the dim light under the rainfall. I can see number 4 Privet Drive if I squint, the lace curtains covering the kitchen window, venetian blinds strung shut in our bedroom with the king sized bed and the shoe tree. The very essence of the bourgeois life lies before me, the nice house in the suburbs with the loving husband and the angelic son. A new car every other year and all the things I could ever want, the picturesque little existence I always claimed to want. Now that I've got it all I can do is simmer silently, jelous of perfect, happy Lily who got everything, including the happily ever after.   
  
I press my nose to the glass and ignore the radio, which is blaring some top forty music off a London station. Vernon is humming along, funny, I never knew he liked bubble gum pop. The song sounds like something I'd listen to when I was fifteen, jumpy and happy, full of new love and old love and achy breaky hearts. The singer croons the chorus and I hear Vernon's voice rising with it. Maybe he forgot I was in the car with him.   
  
"Pet?"   
  
Oh well, there goes hoping he'd forget. Damn!   
  
"Yes, Vernon?"   
  
"Did I ever tell you I loved you?"   
  
"Quite often, dear."   
  
I can't believe the man, he's getting mushy on me again, and he hasn't done that sine I told him our little Dudders was coming. Not that I wanted to name the child Dudley, I was hoping for something a bit more classy, Walter, perhaps. Leave it to Vernon to name the stupid baby while I was pumped full of drugs I hadn't asked for. He told me the child's name in an offhand sort of way. 'Oh, by the way, his name, its Dudley.' Sure thing darling, don't bother to ask me for any input, all I did was give birth.   
  
The car chugs up to the drive, engine cooling as I play with the lock, pushing the door open after a few moments. Inside the rooms look empty, furniture sitting in the gloom like gingham ghosts. There goes the dying living room set, springs creaking under the couch cushions. The edge of the coffee table is in need of a sanding and some new varnish. I sigh and put my coat away in that old closet, the one infested with spiders that just won't perish, even when we fumigate the entire house. Its all the same, only I feel different.   
  
Weeks have gone, sliding by in a mess of timeless moments. Nothing is real anymore; life is tangible as god. The rooms shift, it's like I'm floating. Sometimes I catch my reflection in the mirror, a strange, thin woman with scraggly hair and large brown eyes. She isn't me; I'm huge, gargantuan, with thick thighs and a rounded belly. The pregnancy still sits at the fringes of my mind as I tend to the child with choppy electronic movements. This life is disgusting.  
  
Linoleum kitchen tiles glimmer under the fluorescent bulbs embedded in the ceiling. Everything is surreal, the way the water drips from the faucet to fall with tiny plunks into the sink. His howling in the other room, which I'm ignoring like the negligent bitch I am, in favor of playing with the ball point pen as I scratch out my suicide note in a scrawling childish hand.   
  
Sometimes I want to escape this life. Not the cowardly way I'm trying now, the ending in a cloud of carbon dioxide, but in some flashy fashion that would make Yvonne light up with delight once she heard the gossip worthy news. You know, leave on a train for some foreign city and sleep around with rich men there. Take a waitressing job in London and finish getting my degree. I was used to be a biology major in my other life time. Then I met Vernon, a nice, clean cut boy who made my old boyfriend glower. Polar opposites they were, the nice business major, three years my senior and already lined up for a job with his uncle's corporation, and Thomas, who made everybody call him Tom because he despised formality. So I wanted to make my anarchist, bohemian, not quite monogamous lover pay but traipsing around with the button down prick on my arm. Stupid reason to ruin your life, isn't it? Now I'm living the sort of life they show on 50's sitcoms, picket fence and all. It's not what I imagined of an ivory tower.   
  
The note is done, concise, to the point, no purple prose or flowery wording, just goodbye and I'm sorry. I didn't even have to write I desolation/I. The inside of the stove is dirty; maybe I should have cleaned it before I stuck my head inside. It doesn't matter; I've left milk and bread for the baby. I'm taking the Plath way out, mimicking her death almost to a tee, except I haven't written poetry since I was twenty, and nobody is going to remember Petunia, who did herself in one day between her hair appointment and the bridge club meeting.   
  
Everything is white, but I'll be fucked if this is heaven. Yeah, I didn't imagine the choir of angles to include a frumpy doctor whose nametag is hidden behind his flapping collar.   
  
"Petunia? Can you hear me?"   
  
I nod and shut my eyes, half-listening to him ramble. They found me, thanks to the over helpful mail carrier that found it was his damn Christian duty to call an ambulance and turn off the gas. Vernon is going to be upset, I've probably cut into his time at work and his health insurance probably doesn't cover things of this nature. Petunia the loony, it has a nice ring to it, the ladies at the hairdresser will have a lot to talk about this week. Maybe if I close my eyes, it will all go away.   
  
Home, the same dull house, another dull day. Up at six, feed the brat. Vernon leaves at eight. Remember to take your medication, the pretty little pills, so neat and round. They upped the dosage again, how many milligrams is it now? Paxil is such a pretty name; I think it means peace. Don't let the baby fall on his head now Petunia, hold him gently or they'll take you away. Give him a bonbon Petunia, he likes the sweet taste, the fat little bugger. You know you like watching him gorge himself on sweets, the spoiled brat. You made him.   
  
I tried to leave, but they didn't like that. The men in white coats with smiles and reassuring words called it postpartum depression. Quite normal they said. Give her time they said. She's adjusting to the separation form the fetus. So I didn't get to leave, they pulled my head out of the stove I still use to cook Vernon's supper, and gave me a little vial of little pills. I wonder if it's magic, like Lily was supposed to be learning, the way those little pills can make you okay again.   
  
Lily was my sister once, then she become something splendid and I was left alone, and ugly; the epitome of normalcy. I never forgave her for it, for being everything I wished I could be, beautiful and smart and special. I haven't though about Lily in a long time, I suppose I should call her and tell her I'm sorry. Ha. I'm not you know, not sorry. I was mean to her, haven't spoken to her since she and that great surly slouch of a husband moved to some far off place, something's Hollow. A strange lot they were, magic. Real magic too. I saw her doing it before she learned control, when she was small. She sent a teacup flying clear across the parlor when she was five.   
  
Don't get lost in your thoughts now Petunia, they're not very nice once you start to remember. Keep your eyes on the clock Petunia, don't think, and just do. You have to get the milk Petunia, whole for the baby, skim for yourself. You're getting too thin Petunia, are you trying to disappear?   
  
Something is out there today, nestled among the milk bottles with a small note resting under its fat hand. Harry, Lily's baby; the one I never got to see. Poor thing, he's sleeping and he doesn't know the horrible people they've stuck him with. He'd be better off at the orphanage than with crazy Petunia and her loving, supportive husband who likes to drink bourbon and sleep with thin blonde teenagers who chew bubble gum and wear Blue Waltz perfume. I study him for a bit, red the note over twice, hoping I'll feel something the second time I see her name and the word deceased. Nothing is coming now, but somebody is screaming. Whoever it is had better shut up before they wake up the whole neighborhood.   
  
Vernons here now, putting his arms around me, trying to stop the screaming which is coming from me, I realize now, in ragged bursts. I guess it was me after all.   
  
I'm watching the green digits flipping on the microwave clock, each second slips by, silent except for Vernon's heavy breathing.  
  
"What are we going to do with it?" He jerks his thumb towards the bundle, now asleep in the old bassinet Dudders broke when he had a kicking fit over a lollie just last week.   
  
"Keep him, I suppose. What are we supposed to do? We'll go down to the youth services people tomorrow and start the process to adopt him legally."  
  
"I don't want that kind in my house."   
  
"Do you think I want to take care of another baby? We should at least make sure the he stays alive until we can give him to James' relatives. Don't blow the situation out of proportion."   
  
"I'm not the one who had a screaming fit when she saw it."   
  
Bastard, I'll get you back for that remark.   
  
"Of course not Vernon. He's my sister's son; she's dead now you know. We should keep him here, keep him safe and out of the reaches of those people, those freaks who'll kill him if they get their hands on him. You don't want to have a baby's death on your conscious, do you?"   
  
"Nobody is going to kill him Petunia."   
  
"They killed Lily and that tramp of a husband of hers, would have killed the baby too I bet. They'd kill us without hesitation."   
  
"You're so morbid, I think they haven't got you on enough of those pills."   
  
Really, Vernon? Maybe I should take the whole bottle sometime, see if it makes a difference.   
  
"We're keeping him."   
  
"Fine, but I don't want that filth contaminating my son."  
  
Don't worry, your precious son is a great fat sack of rubbish, a putrid brat. I'd love to wrap my hands about his fat throat and choke the very breath from him.  
  
"He won't, I'll keep them separated."   
  
Leave Vernon. Go make money you can use to buy expensive jewelry for that peroxide blonde you're keeping. Think I don't know about your various indiscretions? Come on, you know you want to leave. I bet you can't stand the site of me, pinched and thin, my nails ragged and face unpainted. I don't care if you think I'm ugly, love, apathy is a wonderful thing.   
  
"I have work."   
  
Sure you do. Go to work early; catch the secretary in the janitorial closet for a brief fuck. Do you tell her you love her while your going at it, sweating and grunting and moaning in her ear? Adulterous son of a bitch, I can tell you enjoy coming home to your little plastic castle at the end of the day to eat a hot, homemade meal with your trophy wife. A shining example of modern domestics, her hair neatly done, face pained, nails shellacked a bright pink. You love having this illusion, the happy wife, the plump baby, and the little house with its quaint little rooms full of love. I'd like to scream at you, throw things around and yell, but I've seen the futility of it all and so I sit dead and staring as you leave the house. I can hear your big feet clomping, on the flagstone walk, your voice muttering darkly and the sound of the emission starting up.   
  
The baby is crying. He's hungry, I'm sure, and so I feed him, watching the small mouth suck on the rubber nipple of the bottle greedily. Such a beautiful baby, pale and skinny, not like my son who was always obscenely fat and pink as an Indian rubber ball. I could love this baby. I could love the way he fits into the crook of your arm perfectly, coos when you tickle him, smiles when you play with him. He's mild and lovely where my own son is loud and fat, a big beach ball with tufts of blonde hair. I've only ever seen one baby with eyes like these before, those glowing green eyes that can really see, not like Dudley's glassy blue ones, or the visionless gaping eyes of my neighbor's children. Only Lily's son could have such captivating eyes. It's not fair she had the baby I dreamed of while Yvonne fed me her awful lemonade in the July heat. It's not fair she died before I could apologize for being so horrid, and stuck me with her offspring.   
  
I sit down with him at the kitchen table, watching him eat. I know he won't be happy, I'm a poor substitute for an evil step-mother, and he isn't exactly Cinderella but my life always seems to play out like some mangled fairy tale where the analogies aren't quite right and the plot is off kilter. I'm not going to be able to handle him. I can't love him; I can't even love my own son. I know I feel something now, lightness, a love for the child, but love is only as good as the lover.   
  
Sitting in the kitchen, the back of the hard wooden chair digging into my hip, I realize I've just opted to care for the sleeping child in the wicker crib. Lily's son, the one I never went to see because I was still mad at her for the stupid, childish reason that she had something I couldn't ever grasp. If I was still human I might cry now, or bang my fists against the tabletop, but I am just an empty vessel smiling through her lipstick caked mouth as the world falls apart around her.  
  
A/N: I know everybody does these Petunia's POV fics but I had an evil little plot bunny that threatened to stay with me until a.) I ate it or b.) I wrote this fic. Seeing as I'm a vegetarian I had to write the fic. If she seems OOC it's because I was trying to make her different, I think I just made her wishy-washy and somewhat of a basket case. As always reviews loved and cherished (come on, you know you want to).  



End file.
